On the way to breakfast, he decided to save time and just ask Mallory how she knew the runaway’s name and address. Oh, yeah, and how had she known where the guy was sitting? The police check of the audience had not included that kind of detail; because of the poor turnout, most audience members had abandoned their ticketed seats for better ones. But Riker was not inclined to ramble on with his queries, and so, as they crossed the broad avenue, he only said, “Talk to me.”
Heading for a Bleecker Street café that did not keep sleepy Villagers’ hours, they had walked a block or so before she said, “You remember that newspaper review, the one the stage manager—”
“A play to die for,” said Riker, quoting the headline, the only line he had been able to read without his bifocals.
“Last night, The Herald’s drama critic came back to see the rest of the play.”
“That’s Leonard Crippen?” Riker’s loyalties lay with The Daily News, and he had no idea who wrote their theater reviews.
“It helps if you know the cashier’s an actor,” said Mallory.
“Of course she is.” In this town, half the population was out-of-work actors, why not the cashier? “Let me guess. Donna Loo knows the critic on sight.”
“Right.” Mallory stopped on the corner outside the café. “And she gave him the same seat he had the night before, the best one in the house. Not the front row. Donna says the raised stage cuts off the actors’ feet, and he would’ve missed the best part of a ballet scene.”
Riker opened the door. “Got it.” He could fill in the rest. When the stage manager had shown them the rave review for opening night, only Mallory had bothered to note the critic’s name, one that was not on the police list for the audience. And then she had asked the cashier if Crippen had returned for the second performance.
Well, this was progress.
Most days his partner required no confirmation for ideas arrived at via telepathic transmissions from other planets. Best of all were the theories she constructed from nothing more than paranoia; they always panned out, and that was scary. But then there were the punch-line scenarios—
And now it was get-even time.
The air of the café was warm and rich with best-loved smells of coffee and bacon. Because Mallory disliked any change in her routine, seats at their regular table were always empty when they walked in—thanks to Gurt, the waitress who lost tips when the young detective hovered over customers to speed up their breakfasts.
Riker was smiling when they sat down by the window. “I see Leonard Crippen as an older guy, a lot older than me.” He looked out at the sidewalk, as if divining his insight from pigeon droppings in the snow. “That’s why he ran out before the cops could stop him.”
Mallory’s eyes narrowed. Suspicious? Yeah, and, bonus, she was annoyed. Where did he get off doing her act? And how had he made the ageist connection to the critic’s flight from the theater?
Easy. At the age of fifty-five, he had a growing sense of what it was like to be left behind—to eat a youngster’s dust. “Crippen could’ve filed his review from the theater if he had a cell phone. Imagine a newspaper guy without one. So . . . no calling, no texting. And no time to stop and chat with the cops. That could take all night—and the critic had a deadline. He had to run for it . . . so he could turn in his review the old-fashioned, old-fart way.”
Gotcha.
• • •
Streets in the SoHo precinct were small-town narrow and flanked by storefronts that changed their faces with every passing era from the factory age through the decades of squatters and artists, and then the galleries and the good-times roll of boutiques, antique stores and trendy restaurants. Now there were dark windows, here and there, with going-out-of-business posters and real estate signs signaling more changes to come.
After dropping Riker off at the station house, the only building to keep its purpose for a century, Mallory drove down to the end of the block, where she killed the engine. Snow was piled waist high between the unmarked police car and the sidewalk, and so she walked back along the slushy cobblestone roadbed—followed by footfalls, the long strides of catch-up steps.
Charles Butler spoke to her back. “You were missed at the last poker game.” And now he walked alongside her, cutting an elegant figure in his long black coat, custom made for a man six-feet-four, who could not easily buy off the rack, even if he were so inclined—and he was not. Tailoring was something they had in common, that and the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game.
“You have to play next week,” he said. “We need the money.”
Mallory nearly smiled. The game was penny ante, a dollar bet was considered daring, and what were the odds that Charles could ever win? He was genetically programmed to blush in every attempt at deceit. And his smile was another accident of birth; in company with a frog’s eyes and a large eagle beak, any expression of happiness made this very smart man look like a crazed clown. She almost forgot to be angry with him for chasing her down this morning.
Almost.
He had forgotten three barber appointments since she had seen him last. His brown hair had grown past his ears, and it would have covered his eyes but for a sudden gust that whipped it back and straightened out the curl. “Do you want to hear what was said behind your back?”
Not really. Her hands jammed into her pockets, head down to duck the wind, she walked faster now. He kept pace with her and kept up the fiction that this conversation was his own idea. Not annoying by nature, Charles was certainly doing the dirty work of someone else, an older man who would keep dogging her until one of them died, and so she asked, “How is Rabbi Kaplan?”
Her proof of conspiracy was in Charles’s reddening face—that and David Kaplan’s many calls stacking up on her answering machine, all invitations to the game and every one of them laced with guilt. The rabbi was ruthless in his lectures on her neglect of old friends—her crimes of the heart.
“David thinks the rules might be too hard on you,” said Charles, the rabbi’s emissary, his proxy stalker. “The others agreed. . . . I was your only defender.”
A lame joke, but so was the card game. She had tired of it when she was twelve years old, long before Charles Butler had become a player. At forty, this psychologist was the youngest man in her foster father’s tight circle of hand-me-down friends. Then and now, he was the anomaly in a world where cops and shrinks were natural enemies, though he had proved useful at times. Transparent Charles, who could not hide a lie of his own, had an uncanny knack for catching liars. He made a polygraph machine look like a Ouija board.
And he might be useful again.
She weighed the payoff against the attendant hassle of a predictable payment: a chair at the table in the poker game, a wasted night. So not worth it.
They had reached the station house. Mallory turned her back on him to pass through an opening in the snow bank, heading for the doors. She caught his reflection in the door’s glass. Ephemeral. Ghosty. And now—the smile of a hopeful loon.
“Charles, I’m running late.”
“The game’s at my place this week. In your honor, we’re dispensing with some of the rules.”
The doors opened, two patrolmen stepped out, and she could see Riker waiting for her inside. “I have to go.”
“Treys will not be wild if it snows,” said Charles. “Sevens won’t be wild cards, either, though it is an election year. And never mind the crescent moon. All cards will be dealt in a clockwise fashion.”
Mallory watched his reflection as one hand reached out to tap her shoulder in a plea for her to turn around. He stopped an inch shy of touching her.
She had rules, too.
With no goodbye, she moved on through the doors, already forgetting that he was ever there.
• • •
The lieutenant in command of Special Crimes had no clear memory of how he had found his way home last night.
There had to be a better cure for high anxiety. Drink should be a last resort to kee
p his head from exploding. In his rookie days, Jack Coffey had spent much time in cop bars, studying under legendary drunks, but proved an unworthy acolyte with merely average ability to hold his liquor. He was also average in respect to physical features, his height and weight—ordinary everything, though the lieutenant was a better cop than most. Still in his thirties, some might say he was young to hold this command—and young to be losing his hair. The growing bald spot at the back of his head was put down to stress.
Too many murders in the house.
He held the telephone receiver to his ear and listened to a city councilman ramble on about missing night-vision goggles—like that was a sane complaint to a homicide squad. It made more sense when Councilman Perry ranted about having seen two first acts, and tonight he wanted to see the whole damn play, but how could the play go on if the police had the goggles?
It would be impolitic to explain to this man that the hierarchy of the NYPD did not include whiney bureaucrats. And so Jack Coffey said, “Goggles. Check. I’ll get right on that.”
Maybe next year.
Click. And the councilman was gone.
It would have been so helpful if Riker and Mallory had shown up on time to brief him on the Broadway suicide. This morning, most of his information had come from the media, and more reporters were stacking up in a row of blinking red lights for calls on hold. They would have to wait. In his present sorry state, he was sensitive to every noise, even to the sound of hair falling out of his scalp and crashing to the floor.
Leaving his private office, seeking relief from the telephone that would not stop ringing, the lieutenant carried his newspaper out to the squad room, a large space with tall windows filmed in grime to discourage sunlight. The high ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes and ducts and spanned by long tubes of ancient fluorescent lights that hissed and threatened to go on the blink any minute. Only two of the desks had empty chairs. The others were occupied by men with cups of brew and deli bags.
No phones were ringing out here, not yet. Blessed peace.
The only holiday decoration was a small potted Christmas tree. This was a personal gift from the mayor to every overworked squad in the city, a token of his honor’s affection as he crippled the police with budget slashes. It said to one and all, Merry Christmas and screw you. The tree had turned brown, and the same apathy that denied it any water had left it to rot on the windowsill. No, wait. Something was different today. The bright plastic decorations were missing. Some joker had strung the brittle branches with bullets painted black. Now doubly grim, the little tree set the tone for morale.
Ah, his errant detectives had come through the stairwell door. They walked to the coatrack—slowly—as if they were not late enough. He stared at Mallory as she shrugged off her new jacket, rich suede lined with fleece. What the hell did that thing cost? Thousands. It called to him across the room, screaming, Dirty money! Dirty money! He always took her wardrobe additions personally. She wanted him to have a heart attack.
The lieutenant waited until the detectives sat down at their facing desks by the bank of windows. Strolling up to them, he said, “Good morning. Did you guys have a nice leisurely breakfast?” There would be no yelling. Too much pain. He rolled his newspaper tight to the width of a beat cop’s baton. “I wanna see your reports on my desk in—”
Mallory handed him a short stack of paper, and he leafed through it. She had typed up their reports and all the interviews. When did she sleep? Did she even need sleep?
Jack Coffey unrolled his newspaper and opened it to the entertainment section. “Let me read you a few lines from The Herald’s second review of the play. ‘A death in the audience every night. It’s a play and a lottery. Buy a ticket and take your chances, but get your will in order before you go.’” He crushed the paper into an unwieldy ball. “Commissioner Beale didn’t bother with chain of command today. He called to ask if there was a problem with letting the play go on. CSU released your crime scene. So, unless you two have a—”
“Hey, no problem,” said Riker. “Of course, if somebody dies tonight, that’s gonna make us look stupid.”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” said the lieutenant. “I called the ME. That woman who kicked off two nights ago? Dr. Slope says she had a heart attack. And the playwright’s death was suicide.” Jack Coffey sent his copy of The Herald flying ten feet to land in a corner wastebasket, a perfect shot. He was much practiced in disposing of bad press this way. And now a civilian clerk stepped up to him and handed over the preliminary autopsy reports still warm from the printer. Nice timing.
“Hold on,” said Riker. “Even Harry Deberman knew that guy was murdered. He tried to hijack our case.”
“Then I may personally hand it over to that worthless asshole.” The lieutenant held up the two sheets of paper. “Prelims on your vics.” He slapped them down, one on Riker’s desk, “Heart attack!” and one for Mallory, “Suicide!” Softer now, he said, “Wrap it up. Make it go away.”
• • •
The room temperature was chilly, the better to keep the meat from spoiling. A morgue attendant walked up to the wall of stainless steel lockers and pulled out two cold-storage drawers for the theater fatalities, Mrs. McCormick and Mr. Beck, who had died on successive evenings.
Tallest among the living and the dead was Dr. Edward Slope, a man with the ramrod posture of a general and gray hair that fit well with a countenance of unyielding stone. The wave of his hand was sufficient to send the attendant scuttling away. The doctor consulted his clipboard, scanning the autopsy findings, and—contrary to the complaint—he found nothing amiss with the work of his pathologists. Turning a cold eye on the two visitors from Special Crimes, he showed them a smile that said, I’m going to eat you alive.
Not every detective in the NYPD warranted a personal audience with the chief medical examiner, but he had a history with Kathy Mallory, an infrequent player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. He had lost many a hand of cards to his old friend’s foster child before the little shark was out of grade school. All these years later, he was still looking for ways to get even—and ways to keep her engaged in what passed for a relationship with another human being. Toward these ends, he employed more sophisticated challenges than cards, each encounter ending in a bloody face-off across a dead body. He did this for Louis. He did it for love.
So this was their game now. They both called it war. However, he was a gentleman, and the first strike would always be hers.
The young detective pulled the sheet back from the face of the woman’s corpse. “You ruled her death as natural causes.” This was said in the tone of talking down to imbeciles.
“Daring of me, wasn’t it? My pathologist saw two heart valves that should’ve been replaced ten years ago. Then he leapt to the rash conclusion that it was heart failure, a natural death. And I signed off on it. What was I thinking?”
“There are other ways to bring on a heart attack.”
“Yes, Kathy . . . there are.” Oh, did that sound condescending?
“Mallory,” she said—she insisted—so unforgiving in his use of her given name. Upon graduation from the Police Academy, she had granted him only the options of her rank or surname.
Tough.
He pulled the sheet down farther to expose crude autopsy stitches. “If you wanted to induce this heart attack, you’d have to cut her open, crack the rib cage, stick your hand into her chest cavity and shred two heart valves. . . . But my pathologist would’ve noticed that in the postmortem.” He covered the late Mrs. McCormick. “The valves failed the heart. That’s fact, not opinion. And the heart failed the woman.” He turned to the neighboring drawer’s steel bed with the draped corpse of the playwright, Mr. Beck. “And that one’s a suicide. Exsanguination, to be precise. He bled out. I don’t plan to change the cause of his death, either, Kathy.”
This time she only glared at him for failing to address her in a more professional manner. She had warned him. There was always a warning before—
>
Riker stepped between them. “Here’s the catch, Doc. These two people died in the same place, the exact same time on two different nights.”
“I see. . . . So you assumed my staff must’ve missed something.” Not likely. “Obviously, Mr. Beck selected the time of his death. A pity we can’t ask him why he matched it to Mrs. McCormick’s heart attack, but that’s what happened. And that supports suicide.”
Kathy Mallory drew back the sheet to expose the dead man’s neck wound. “Very neat stitches. Dr. Pool did this one, right?”
“So he did.” Eyes on the first page of the preliminary report, he paraphrased Dr. Pool’s opinion. “No bruising, no defensive wounds. The only wound is consistent with suicide.” He looked up from his reading. “So, before you ask, Mr. Beck isn’t getting a broad-base tox scan, either.” Slope handed his clipboard to the more reasonable detective, Riker, and pointed to a line on the top sheet. “Check out his alcohol level.”
Riker donned a pair of bifocals and said, “Holy crap!”
Edward Slope nodded to second this opinion. “Rather admirable that he managed to remain upright long enough to get to the theater. Most men his size would’ve passed out on less alcohol. Our Mr. Beck seems to have had lots of practice.” Retrieving the paperwork from Riker’s hand, the doctor flipped to the next page. “Now here’s an odd note—”
“He didn’t have an alcoholic’s liver,” said Detective Mallory.
The medical examiner paused for a count of three. “Kathy, why don’t we bypass the silly autopsies. Waste of my time. Just type up your own damn—”
“Hey,” said Riker, “is she right?”
“No signs of long-term alcohol abuse, and Mr. Beck has indicators for a vegetarian. Stomach contents, skin coloring. High carotene levels—apparently he favored carrots. Very health-conscious diet. So the drinking jag indicates a recent change in his state of mind, but not for the better. And that also supports a finding of suicide. Dr. Pool’s logic is flawless.”
It Happens in the Dark - M11 Page 6
